Sicilian Shandy
A shandy built the other way round. The traditional British version is roughly half beer and half lemonade; this one is five parts lemonade to one of lager, which makes it a lemonade with a beery edge rather than a beer that has been lengthened. Taken on those terms it is a good drink and a genuinely useful one — it sits somewhere near one percent alcohol, which is a real category of thing to hand someone on a hot afternoon. The Sicilian lemonade is what carries it. It is made with lemon juice rather than lemon flavouring, so it is sharper and less sugary than the bottled lemonade most shandies are built from, and it needs that sharpness to stand up to even a small measure of lager. Use a clean, cold, unremarkable lager. This is not the drink for anything hoppy, and it is emphatically not the drink for a good IPA.
Glassware: Highball Glass
Garnish: Lime Wedge
Ingredients
250ml
Made with real lemon juice, which is why it is sharp enough to carry the drink. A standard sweet bottled lemonade in its place gives you something much closer to a soft drink.
50ml
A clean, cold, unfussy one. The lager is providing body and a faint bready bitterness, not flavour of its own. Hoppy beers fight the lemon and lose.
Fill the glass
Cubed. Both components should already be cold from the fridge — the ice is there to keep them that way rather than to chill them from room temperature.
Instructions
Fill a highball glass with cubed ice.
Pour in the Sicilian lemonade.
Tilt the glass and add the lager slowly down the side.
Garnish with a slice of lime.
Source: the producer's own published serve (Fever-Tree). Last checked 22 August 2026.
Expert Tip
Pour the lager in last and pour it gently. Beer foams against anything, and a shandy that has been built beer-first arrives as a glass of foam with liquid underneath it. Tilt the glass and let it run down the side. If you want the traditional balance, go to equal parts and accept that it becomes a different and considerably beerier drink. The published measure is deliberately light, and worth trying as written before adjusting — most people expect it to taste watery and find that it does not. Avoid anything hoppy. Bitterness from hops and acidity from lemon pull in opposite directions, and a pale ale here tastes like a mistake rather than a variation.
Flavour Profile
Where It Comes From
The shandy is British and old enough to have an odd name attached to it: shandygaff, which appears in print from the 1850s and originally meant beer mixed with ginger beer. The lemonade version came later and eventually took over the word entirely.
Germany has a parallel in the Radler, beer and lemon soda. The often-repeated story that a Munich innkeeper invented it in 1922 to stretch his supply for a crowd of cyclists is repeated more confidently than the evidence supports, but the drink itself is genuine and widespread.
What both versions share is purpose. A shandy exists to be drunk in quantity in warm weather without consequence.
Why the Ratio Is Not a Mistake
Five to one looks wrong next to a pub shandy and it is worth understanding before adjusting it. At half and half, the beer dominates and the lemonade reads as a sweetener. At five to one the beer stops being a flavour and becomes a texture — it adds weight, a little bready bitterness, and a softer carbonation than the lemonade has alone.
The result is a lemonade with more going on rather than a diluted beer. Whether that is what you want is a fair question, but it is a deliberate drink rather than a mismeasured one.
Real Lemon Matters Here
With this little beer in the glass, the lemonade has almost nowhere to hide. Most bottled lemonade is sweet, lightly acidic and flavoured rather than juiced, and at 250ml that becomes obvious.
A lemonade made with actual lemon juice has a sharper, less rounded acidity and a bitterness in the finish from the peel oils. Both are doing structural work in a drink this simple.
Frequently Asked Questions
How strong is it?
Around one percent, depending on the lager. That is roughly a third of a traditional half-and-half shandy and well below a standard beer, which is the point of building it this way.
What beer should I use?
A clean lager — the kind that is unremarkable on its own. Hoppy beers clash with the lemon acidity, and anything dark or malty overwhelms the drink at any ratio.
Can I make it a proper shandy?
Go to equal parts and it becomes one. It is a beerier, less refreshing drink and considerably stronger. Try the published ratio first — it is lighter than it sounds but not as thin as most people expect.
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Recipe by Dan Freeman
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